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| Long Ride day 13 - Hervey Bay to Dalby |
Day 13 of the Long Ride was supposed to have been a considerably long one, the planned destination was to be Goondiwindi. It didn't happen, for a number of reasons.
After the great dinner the night before we treated ourselves to a bit of a sleep in before being served one of the best breakfasts you could imagine. With such great food on offer the morning was already a bit of a write off, a 9:30 start now turned into somewhere around midday.
Again I can't thank Kat, Damon and little Georgia for the hospitality, and along with Jim and Adam for their donation. Thank you very much.
After saying our goodbyes we set off for a ride along the Esplanade in Hervey Bay. I'd also been told in Cairns that Hervey Bay has more people with missing limbs than anywhere else in Australia, so I had to check this out. Apparently if the people do have all their limbs then they are generally missing a digit.
As we rode along I nearly ran into the back of a car while checking everyone's legs and arms. Bugger, I couldn't find one person with a missing body part, it was actually a bit of a let down, all I asked for was just one missing toe or thumb.
We continued to ride around and the thing that struck me the most was just how much the foreshore area of Hervey Bay looks like Torquay, then to my surprise we came across a suburb called Torquay, although it wasn't as tacky as ours. I then wondered who got in first. Did we Victorians rip off Hervey Bay, who in turn ripped off Britain.
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| This whale was massive. The tail was about a kilometre away. |
One really impressive things with Hervey bay is a stainless steel and wooden whale that is breaching out of the concrete, it really was something to behold. Even more impressive is it's tale sticking out of a roundabout about a kilometre down the road. Fuck me, that was modelled on one hell of a whale. I'm sure there's a stature somewhere in Hervey Bay of a grumpy old prick with one leg, crying "there she blows, the great white whale". Now the whole limb thing was starting to come together.
We headed out of town to the first place we would come across, Maryborough. Bloody hell, another place ripped off from Victoria, you'd swear these Queeslanders had no sense of imagination.
Only about 30 minutes down the road Maryborough was an easy ride except for the knob in the blue Mazda 626 or whatever crap it was. He came up behind me at about 170 kph, while I was doing the speed limit. He pulled to the right at the very last minute as I ducked left, almost running off the road. He almost did the same on the other side of the road. Friggin' idiot.
Anyway, Maryborough is a beautiful town. Very green and tropical despite being considerably below the Tropic of Capricorn (near Rockhampton). There's beautiful old Queenslander style houses everywhere, you know, the sort that are on stilts and have wooden lattice work everywhere. Beautiful.
The one thing that let the area down was all the bloody cane fields still, but these were starting to thin.
We refuelled at a BP were the guy working the till looked like he was about 12 years old and had a voice like a young Taylor Swift. I almost died laughing when I noticed a wedding ring on his finger. Is it legal to marry so young in Queensland?
From here we set off towards Gympie where the turn off for Kingaroy would be. All of this way we would still be in the Bruce Highway, but it was starting to become a little more interesting. We actually missed the turn off so went right through Gympie and had to turn around too find the Wide Bay Highway. Once on here the road became very interesting as we headed into what must be Queensland's high country. The cane fields were now gone and replaced with cattle farms, similar to what the Victorian high country has. The numerous little towns were picture perfect, it seems while Queensland is very progressive with it's larger towns, it also takes great pride in keeping its heritage in place in the smaller towns. I really love the contrast. Some of these towns look like they have changed in 100 years. It was a great pity we couldn't stop to have a look at these places but it was getting late in the day and we still had to at least make Kingaroy, the peanut capital of Australia. It's also the home of former Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Peterson and pumpkin scone making wife, Flo. Like I said the peanut capital of Australia.
We arrived in Kingaroy at around 4:30pm and it was already starting to get very cold. I thought Queensland was always supposed to be warm? That's what the advertisements tell us.
There was no time to look around, as it was already starting to get dark. That's the one thing I really have noticed with Queensland, it really seems to get dark quite early. The refuelled and had a quick drink before heading on for the last 110 kilometres to get to Dalby, we'd set this as the goal so that we could try and keep on schedule the next day.
As we rode out of Kingaroy and tow-plane was taking a sail-plane up to altitude before releasing and turning away. This was all very impressive and quite graceful.
We plugged on as the light started to fail. The sunset was spectacular. And now the temperature was becoming quite low, apparently the forecast was for a very cold night and frosts the next morning.
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| Has anyone seen Ewan? Is he still diving for his suppository? |
The great thing was at least one of the workers staying at the hotel was interested in what we are doing and thought it was great that we are doing this for men's health and the PCFA. I got the impression that perhaps he had gone through something similar himself but didn't know how to talk about it. Again we might have made a difference with at least one person.
As I type this the netbook has started beeping and the powerpoint is hissing, me thinks its time to go onto battery power. I'd better check the fire escape plan just in case.
On that note, I'll head off to bed, hoping the smoke detector works. Hmm actually there isn't one.
The total now raised is $12,868 and still climbing. We rode 485 kilometres today taking the overall total to 5,131 kilometres. Tomorrow we cross over into New South Wales and head towards Tamworth. It's an early start ...
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